🤐 Krishna Poda reveals why AI is lying to you about your data (and how to fix it)
🚀 Matthew Bertulli shares the 34-tool tech stack that powers his growing brand
🥊 Jerel Blades wants to help you manage that “dopamine hit” from scaling ads
Plus, this week’s top-five headlines from consumer news.
BONUS: Wild Roman Hiring Head of Growth
Friend of the Operators, Sahil Bloom, is hiring a Head of Growth for Wild Roman, his fast-growing natural skincare brand for men. He’s looking for a “high-agency builder” who can drive efficient week-over-week growth and figure things out as they go.
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Krishna Poda
Founder, Saras Analytics
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Claude is Lying to You (Because Your Data is Lying to It)
Right now, every ecom brand is using AI to make sense of their data. But there’s a problem.
AI analysis is only as good as the inputs it’s given.
If Shopify revenue doesn’t match finance, attribution doesn’t match ad platforms, and returns don’t reconcile across systems, Claude will reflect those inconsistencies in its answers.
Which makes getting the truth — and making good decisions — virtually impossible.
This is why I started Saras Analytics.
We help ecommerce brands unify their customer, order, marketing, fulfillment, and finance systems into a single, reliable data foundation.
- No conflicting dashboards
- No competing definitions
- One source of truth
With all your numbers reconciled in one place, Claude can answer real business questions about your margins, customers, and growth instantly.
Brands like Ridge, Momentous, True Classic, and AG1 already trust Saras with the numbers behind their business.
If you want to trust your numbers, get real answers from AI, and make faster, smarter decisions, then …
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Matthew Bertulli
CEO, Lomi & Pela Case
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Editor’s Note: This is the second of five technology + vendor stacks — one for each of the Operators’ brands. Once complete, we’ll compile them into a single database.
No recommendation has paid for placement.
However, sponsors of the podcasts have been marked with a 🤝
At Pela, we’re hyper-focused on making sure apps deliver tremendous value — whether they help generate incremental revenue, support marketing efforts, create new opportunities, improve workflows, or simply save us time.
Our ratings + recommendations are based on whether the app or agency delivers the value we’re looking for, is used regularly by the team, and does what it is supposed to.
Andrei Petrik, Pela’s Dir. of Marketing, and I have ranked them in groups of 5 stars to 2 stars along with the amount of Annual GMV (online sales) for when we recommend them.
5-Star ☆☆☆☆☆ Partners
Creative Analytics: Motion 🤝
Annual GMV: <$1M
Very useful. It provides great insights into creative performance in one interface. Everyone at Pela who works on ad creative or with the creative uses it.
The Motion team releases advanced features regularly, but they should also release some basic features like adding tags in bulk.
CRO: Intelligems
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Switched to them in 2025 from Convert(.)com. We like it a lot better. Has many more test types (offers, prices, etc.), can go simple or complex, and their price testing feature is really interesting and insightful.
SMS: Postscript 🤝
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Reasonably priced. Reps are a bit pushy to send more messages. Besides that, it is an exceptional tool — and over the years we have tried them all.
Outperforms regular messages, though you have to stay on top of it and keep refining.
Creative (Agency): Goodo Studios
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
They produce scripted creative. They’re very responsive, take great direction, and have spearheaded quite a few well-performing ads. The content quality is fantastic.
Copy & Landing Page: Claude
Annual GMV: <$1M
Our go-to AI used to be ChatGPT, but Claude is better — from copywriting and building apps to serving as an internal knowledge base.
Landing Page: Replo
Annual GMV: <$1M
One of the better page builders on the market. Easily integrates with Shopify. Tons of templates, design tools, and elements available to make all your landing page dreams come true. They consistently release new features.
Product Feed: DataFeedWatch
Annual GMV: <$1M
Used to connect + send product listings to various ad channels. Basic interface but has advanced features that allow for a great deal of feed customization.
We rarely have to think about it. It just works. In most cases, you can set it and forget it — unless you need to add another feed or a channel or do some customization.
Ads Management: Ad Manage
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Great tool for uploading ads in bulk. Saves us many hours. Supported by tons of features and a great team building it. One of the best parts is that they’re not rigid with a specific process. They easily plug into your internal systems.
Paid Search (Agency): Brogan Digital
Annual GMV: <$1M
Very proactive. They helped us scale search. Plus, they provide forecasts and track against actuals; their performance updates are packed with detailed insights, opportunities, testing ideas, and actionable next steps.
Reviews and Surveys: Okendo
Annual GMV: <$1M
One of those rare tools that is fairly priced and provides everything you need to get the job done. We started using it for customer reviews, but when they rolled out new features like surveys, we consolidated and got rid of other tools like HotJar and Knocommerce.
Discounts: Bulk Discount Code Bot
Annual GMV: <$1M
Crazy useful tool. If you generate as many codes as we do, then this is a must-have. Simple and easy to generate thousands of codes in bulk in a minute or two.
Email: Klaviyo
Annual GMV: <$1M
Improved significantly over the last couple of years. Even though it’s rolled out more features and has more integrations, Klaviyo is still easy to use. If the SMS offering worked as well — and was priced the same or better — it might be worthwhile switching over from Postscript.
Attribution: Northbeam 🤝
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) with a rich feature set. To get the most out of the platform, you definitely need to have a rep. Beyond just showing you how to use it, the reps provide tactical and strategic advice on media buying and media mix.
Product Gifting (Agency): BM Digital
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
Content creator sourcing and product seeding. They also run performance-based ads through their accounts (whitelisting). Great partner. Able to activate hundreds of creators each month.
Customer Signal: Blotout
Annual GMV: <$10M-$50M
Captures better data about our customers and sends clearer signals back to ad platforms. Allowed us to reach more new customers by optimizing for custom events.
4-Star ☆☆☆☆ Partners
CX: Richpanel 🤝
Annual GMV: <$1M
Good pricing. Great features. Our team likes it better than other solutions, but they need to improve their AI functions.
CRO: Microsoft Clarity
Annual GMV: <$1M
Heatmaps and session recordings. Can feel a bit clunky; decent tool for being free.
Ideation: Milanote
Annual GMV: <$1M
Creative and product ideation platform. Helps you organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.
Direct Mail: PostPilot
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Our go-to for personalized, triggered postcard campaigns to customers and prospects via direct mail (snail mail). Now integrates directly into Klaviyo workflows.
Creative: Marpipe
Annual GMV: <$1M
Allows you to create beautiful and dynamic catalog ads. A bit of an advanced tool, but it helps cut through the clutter. Sadly, it’s only available for the ads serving US audiences.
Checkout: Qikify
Annual GMV: <$1M
We evaluated several checkout customization apps when we moved over to Checkout Extensibility. Qikify was the clear winner. But only available for Shopify Plus merchants. If you have Rebuy, some of the extensions in this app will be redundant.
Subscriptions: Recharge
Annual GMV: <$1M
Simple and effective for our legacy membership program. Allows a lot of customization, but can get expensive quickly as you grow. What Klaviyo is for email, Recharge is for subscriptions.
Incrementality: Haus 🤝
Annual GMV: $10M–$50M
Very expensive tool (plus the media cost for test campaigns).
However, they have great support. Not only do they look at your media mix from a strategic level, they provide tactical advice as well. They are really interested in your business and keen on helping you succeed.
Product Gifting (Agency): Aligned Growth
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Product seeding. They are able to get really good creators. Our day-to-day reps are good to work with. But FYI, their sales team is relentless. They offer almost zero flexibility on contract terms.
Video Analysis: Google AI Studio
Annual GMV: <$1M
Great tool for video analysis. Informs our ad copy, naming conventions, and categorization.
Upsells: Rebuy
Annual GMV: <$1M
Adds upsells and generates personalized shopping experiences. Has boosted our AOV by approx 4%.
Our team loves the variety of logic options available. But it takes time to set everything up if you have thousands of SKUs.
Biggest downsides are if you’re on Shopify Markets and sell in different currencies, your post-checkout upsells will only work with default currency + store. They have also rolled back support. We used to have dedicated reps.
Post-Purchase: Aftersell 🤝
Annual GMV: <$1M
Recently started with it. Not as robust as Rebuy, but is more cost effective and a better solution for post-purchase upsells. Great support. Also, we have Rokt enabled in our checkouts which allows us to earn incremental revenue from other brands’ offers.
Only drawback is limited customer data sources for powering personalized upsells and other features.
Design: Figma
Annual GMV: <$1M
Emails and ad design.
3-Star ☆☆☆ Partners
Pop-Ups: Alia
Annual GMV: <$1M
Currently testing it as a replacement for Amped; performance is the same. However, it needs a better builder and design tools. If it had stronger A/B test reporting + UI, it’d get a full five stars.
Project Management: Monday
Annual GMV: <$1M
Glorified spreadsheet. There are better tools out there. Would consider them, but our team is tied to this tool.
Post-Purchase: ShipInsure
Annual GMV: <$1M
Implemented it recently and did an A/B test. Pretty much a tie with control group on all metrics. Hopefully, it will provide some kind of benefit in the future. As of now, overhyped.
Creative (Agency): Unlock Performance
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Turnkey creative for UGC ads. They mostly work off proven formulas. Had a couple of hits when they first started, but didn’t improve much after that. They didn’t incorporate feedback well.
Brainstorming: ChatGPT
Annual GMV: <$1M
It’s more of a sparring and ideation partner these days.
2-Star ☆☆ Partners
Affiliate: Awin (prev. ShareASale)
Annual GMV: <$1M
We are currently on their Core trial. Our manager has been great. But our trial is ending, and I don’t think we will continue. They tried to get us more partners. Right now, we don’t have the capacity. I’m not invested in Awin. I think if we got rid of it, we wouldn’t see much impact. The program is almost too big for us.
Questions about any of the tools or agencies?
Hit reply … we’ll do a Q&A newsletter or throw it into our next MOperators Hotline episode.
And special thanks to Andrei Petrik — Pela’s Dir. of Marketing — who quite honestly did most of the work on this!
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Cody Plofker
CEO, Jones Road Beauty
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Matt, I Ran Pela Case Through Checkout Index + Found Three Quiet Leaks
Pela Case is one of the most recognized sustainable phone case brands on the planet. The product story is tight. The mission resonates.
And yet, the checkout is still leaving money on the table.
How do I know?
Because I just ran Pela Case through PrettyDamnQuick’s Checkout Index (it’s free). Here’s what I found.
1. No upsells on mobile
Pela’s checkout upsell — the one showing relevant accessories and add-ons — appears on desktop but not on mobile.
Considering ~80% of traffic happens on mobile devices, that’s some seriously low-hanging fruit.
My second and third findings both have to do with shipping.
2. Limited shipping protection
Pela doesn’t consistently offer shipping protection or package insurance at checkout — sometimes it appears automatically, sometimes there’s an add-on, sometimes … nothing.
That’s a simple upsell many brands use to add 0.5–2% AOV while giving customers peace of mind.
3. Delivery windows don’t show dates
Shipping estimates show ranges like “7–14 days” instead of clear arrival dates. Something like “Arrives Mar 15–17” can increase purchase confidence and conversions.
All in all, 76 out of 100. That said …
Matt has already built a successful brand from the ground up. This just proves that there’s always more to learn.
Want to see how your store’s checkout experience stacks up against more than 500 brands?
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Jerel Blades
Head of Growth, Tushy
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That Dopamine Hit of Scaling Ad Spend
But, here’s the thing …
1. Scaled ad spend needs to be rationalized in real P&L outcomes.
2. Proper measurement methodology is non-negotiable, especially as you reach greater levels of scale.
Spoiler alert: it’s not your MTA solution.
3. Incremental testing is important, but only if you can operationalize it in your strategy.
Hot take (maybe): Incrementality is wildly misunderstood and very rarely utilized properly.
4. Channel diversification is great, but it is way more nuanced than you think. Do not overdiversify too early; do not diversify when it’s too late.
5. Product-channel fit is real. This is hyper unique to your brand, not what someone tells you online.
6. Scaled ad spend can expose bad strategies, bad ad units, and weak content strategy really quickly. Get back to your basics.
7. At a certain scale, successfully increasing ad spend has a lot to do with channel mix.
To be the ’96 Bulls, you’ve got to have that 30 PPG scorer with a good supporting cast. Who’s grabbing those boards? Who’s setting the screen? Those things matter, too.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I will be cramming all the above into a 5-minute lightning round at this week’s Operators Ads Masterclass!
I’ll also be sticking around to learn from 25 other amazing marketers and operators.
Insane value.
Homeless to a Billion-Dollar Ecommerce Brand: Comfrt’s Founder, Hudson Leogrande
The Operators Playbook for Getting Every Employee to Use AI With Saras Analytics CEO
Meta’s Manus AI Enters the Chat: Is Media Buying “Dead”?
Emergency Briefing: Your Tariff Refund Checklist With Ryan Petersen, Flexport CEO
Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, the five top stories in commerce and DTC.
1. Coefficient Capital Raises Over $500M: Business Wire
New York-based growth equity firm Coefficient Capital raised more than $500M across two of its funds. The firm secured $290M for its early-stage Fund II, and another $240M for its later-stage Apex Fund. Founded in 2018 by Franklin Isacson and Andrew Goletka, Coefficient has backed brands like Lemme, Magic Spoon, Sincerely Yours, TRIP, and many others.
2. Morinaga Acquires My/Mochi: FoodBev
Morinaga, the Japanese confectionery company best known for owning HI-CHEW, is expanding its brand portfolio in the US by acquiring My/Mochi, a vertically integrated purveyor of mochi ice cream and the largest mochi brand in the US. According to SPINS, My/Mochi generated $80M in sales for the 52-week period ending on Jan 25th. Marubeni Corporation acquired another mochi maker, Bubbies Ice Cream, last Jun.
3. Casamigos Founders Launch Non-Alc Beer: Gear Patrol
George Clooney, Rande Gerber, and Mike Meldman are back in the beverage business after selling Casamigos to Diageo for $1B in 2017. The trio recently launched Crazy Mountain, a premium non-alcoholic beer brand with a western vibe. Celebrities are piling into the non-alc beer space with Tom Holland, John Mulaney, and Charlie Sheen either launching or investing in brands in the category.
4. Henkel Buys Not Your Mother’s: Twitter (X)
German CPG giant Henkel has acquired mass-market haircare brand Not Your Mother’s for an undisclosed sum. Barclays estimated Not Your Mother’s purchase price to be around $930M. Founded in 2010 by Bethany & Rocky Pagliarulo, Not Your Mother’s offers high-performance haircare products at approachable prices. Retail partners include Target, Walmart, CVS, and several others.
5. Fruit Riot Lands in the UK: Instagram
Fruit Riot, an innovative and fast-growing frozen novelty brand, officially launched at Tesco in the UK. The company has been on a roll since releasing its sour candy-coated frozen fruit line in 2023. In addition to securing distribution at Albertsons, Costco, Target, and Walmart, Fruit Riot recently made Bain & Company’s prestigious Insurgent Brands list. Now Fruit Riot is going abroad to determine if it will thrive in the UK.
One Last Ask
After you click all of the sponsored links. After you sign up for this week’s Operators Ads Masterclass. After you apply to be Head of Growth at Sahil Bloom’s Wild Roman …
Go show Jerel Blades some love!
He is a phenomenal operator and a huge supporter of everything we do. In fact, he not only shared the event on LinkedIn, but he literally posted for the very first time on Twitter (X).
We need more people like Jerel on that platform!
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff 🤓 Executive Editor
P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Saras and PrettyDamnQuick for sponsoring today’s newsletter.